Questions and answers from our custom print technology webinar

Nov 27, 2017

Over 300 attendees joined us for our webinar “Integrating XMPie – Personalization for Vistaprint Corporate” to get an inside look at our custom print portal technology. The American Printer Weekly newsletter called it “the best webinar of the year,” and we couldn’t be happier. A recording of this webinar is available here.

We received so many great questions during the webinar that time constraints prevented us from answering all of them. Our team gathered answers to webinar questions we think you’ll find most enlightening, organized in the following categories: business, technology development, portal setup, portal use, and the webinar portal demonstration.*

We hope you’ll find the answers below to be helpful and informative. If our webinar material has you thinking that Vistaprint Corporate could be a great match for your company, we’d love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch with a representative and let us know how we can meet your print needs.

Business

Q: What was the inspiration for creating personalized portals for big corporations?

A: Vistaprint and Vistaprint Corporate independently serve the needs of their customers. Vistaprint continues to grow in serving small business owners and helping them expand their business. Vistaprint Corporate is focused on larger organizations that also have custom printing needs, but fulfill them at a different scale, and thus require a unique set of tools than what Vistaprint.com offers.

Q:I’m a small marketing agency providing my clients with design and print products. How can I use this service with multiple clients?

A:Our upload and print functionality would be a great way to order materials for your clients. For example, let’s say you have many clients who need postcards. You can upload unique designs for these clients on a blank postcard template and order prints for them. Click here to get in touch with a representative to learn more about what we can do for an agency like yours.

Q:Do you plan on allowing for storage of items to be shipped when requested so that a business can lower cost by ordering mass quantities, or do you plan to only have print-on-demand items?

A:We focus on printing-on-demand so customers don’t have to worry about storing their items and having to pre-order. However, we understand that mass quantity orders have unique needs. In certain cases, we would be able to accommodate storage for large orders.
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Technology Development

Q:Did you consider using XLIM instead of InDesign processing?

A:We use XLIM for a set of documents we converted from our legacy system. We use InDesign Documents created by our implementation staff for new templates as it provides a larger set of features.

Q:To what level are XMPie and APIs being used? Is uProduce in the background processing the visuals and displaying them to the customer? Does automation then take the order to production?

A: uProduce is used for generating previews when customizing a product, and then a final proof image to be used for manufacturing. The BB website does integrate with various levels of APIs (that are not XMPie- or uProduce-related) to request manufacturing of that product once an order is submitted.

Q:What framework is the custom web-to-print system built using?

A: We leverage various tools/frameworks along with XMPie/InDesign, including eCommerce platforms and a print fulfillment API developed by Cimpress.

Portal Use

Q:What approval functionality is there?

A:Approvals allow you to approve or decline an entire order. The order will be sent to the portal administrator who will be able to view all order information. A note to the user will let them know if their order is approved or declined.

Q:Can you give more information about batch ordering?

A:Batch ordering allows you to upload multiple cards (on the same template) at one time. For example, if you are ordering business cards for multiple people, click “Create a batch order” and that will allow you to download an Excel file that contains the text fields on your template. You enter in the information, save to your desktop, upload to the portal, and those cards will be created at one time. From here, you can select your quantity and add the items to your cart.

Q:Can you upload a .csv file for personalization?

A: We offer the ability to create multiple customizations of the same template by uploading a single .csv file. Our software then creates the different product customizations automatically.

Q:How are you dealing with reorders for the same product?

A:We have a Reorder tab on the top right of the product. This enables us to take the document they previously ordered and add it to their cart. From the cart, they can edit text if need be.

A:There are APIs for customers that have their own front end so that they can programmatically place orders through Cimpress manufacturing. We are also always looking to integrate new fulfillers that may provide products that would be valuable to our customers as well.

Q:Do all end users get the same-looking storefront?

A: All end users on one portal have the same-looking storefront except for the portal administrator — this user (who typically creates the account) will have a special Admin Dashboard view where they can see all orders placed on the portal, all users who have signed up, and manage approvals and payment information.

Q:How do you guarantee the quality of the imprint with the varied file quality a customer may upload?

A:We discover most file quality issues when setting up a template. Users can also spot a file quality issue when doing an actual customization and seeing a live preview.

Q:How does a partner manage color scheme?

A: Our templates are set up either using the CMYK color scheme or Pantone.

Q: What happens when the customer wants to add more variable data (i.e. back of postcard)?

A: You can add variable data both on the front and the back of products.